[ NARRATOR ]
The platform level was darker than the concourse.
The emergency lighting ran only along the edges of the platform itself, not down the access stairs, so the descent was done by headlamp, two beams cutting through the black, one from Damian's forehead, one from a light Theo-3 had mounted to his left shoulder. The stairs were dry. The platform was not.
The flooding started at the base of the stairs. Ankle height at the platform edge, rising to mid-shin as they moved toward the track level. The water was dark and still and smelled of wet concrete and something underneath it, something organic that had been sitting in the dark for five months. It reflected the headlamps back in broken pieces.
The MRT train was still there. Sitting in the station exactly where it had stopped, doors open, interior dark. Whatever passengers had been inside were not inside anymore. The seats were empty. The automated PA screen at the front still showed the last destination — Tuas Link — frozen mid-scroll.
Theo-3 checked the air quality meter.
"Oxygen is adequate," he said. "We will not need the masks for this section. But I want to check again at the midpoint. If the readings drop below acceptable I want us to use them immediately. Not wait."
Damian nodded. He was standing at the platform edge looking at the tunnel ahead. The two headlamps reached maybe twenty meters into it before the dark swallowed everything completely. Beyond that nothing. Just the faint sound of water moving somewhere deeper in.
"How far to Tiong Bahru," he said.
"Approximately eight hundred meters. On foot through flooded tunnel, forty to sixty minutes depending on water depth variation."
Damian looked at the tunnel for another moment.
Then he stepped off the platform edge and dropped into the water below.
The splash echoed off the tunnel walls and came back to them doubled, tripled, rolling away into the dark in both directions before fading.
They both went still.
Listening.
Nothing responded to the sound.
Theo-3 stepped down beside him. Echo shifted in the backpack, chin appearing over the edge, nose working at the tunnel air with the focused attention of an animal reading a language humans couldn't hear.
They walked into the dark.
[ DAMIAN ]
The tunnel was a different kind of silence than the hospital had been.
The hospital silence was empty, the absence of the sounds a building was supposed to make. This was something older. The tunnel had never been meant for footsteps moving slowly through shin-deep water in the dark. Every step we took came back to us from the curved concrete walls, slightly distorted, like the tunnel was repeating what we did with a half-second delay and a question mark attached.
I kept my headlamp forward and let the beam do what it could.
Twenty meters. Thirty. The platform light behind us reduced to a pale rectangle and then to nothing.
Just the tunnel. The water. The sound of two sets of movement through it. Mine, splashing and slow, and Theo-3's, quieter, more precise, his feet finding the rail bed beneath the water with a consistency I couldn't match.
"Talk to me," I said.
"About what sir?"
"Anything. The quiet is worse."
A brief pause. "The East West Line was opened in stages between 1987 and 1990," Theo-3 said. "This section, from Outram Park to Tiong Bahru, opened in 1988. The tunnel lining we are walking through is therefore approximately seventy three years old. I find this interesting. It has been here longer than most of the people who ever used it."
"That's what you went with."
"I have more if that was insufficient."
"It's fine," I said. "Keep going."
The water depth was inconsistent. For long stretches it stayed at mid-shin, manageable, just the resistance of it slowing our pace. Then a dip in the tunnel floor would take it to knee height without warning and I would have to adjust my balance and keep moving. The rail bed helped, two lines of raised metal running through the center of the tunnel that gave footing when the floor between them was uncertain.
At the twenty minute mark Theo-3 stopped.
"Air check," he said.
He held the meter up. I watched his face while he read it.
"Acceptable," he said. "CO2 is higher than surface level but within safe range. Oxygen is sufficient. We continue without masks." He paused. "Your breathing rate has increased slightly. This is normal at this exertion level in reduced oxygen. But I want you to tell me immediately if you experience headache or dizziness."
"I will."
"I mean immediately sir. Not when you think it is bad enough to mention. Immediately."
"Theo."
"Yes sir."
"I will tell you immediately."
"Thank you." A pause. "Also Echo appears to be enjoying this. I want to note that I find her enthusiasm for the tunnel somewhat baffling."
I looked back at the backpack. Echo's head was fully out, ears forward, nose going constantly, scanning the tunnel air like she had decided this was an adventure rather than a crisis. Her tail, from what I could see of it, was moving.
Something in my chest loosened slightly. "She's a dog, Theo. They're like that."
"I see," Theo-3 said, in the tone of someone filing new information. "Noted."
We kept moving.
Then Echo went still.
Not tense. Not growling. Just still. The nose stopped moving. The ears angled, the particular position of an animal that had heard something and was deciding what it meant.
I stopped.
Theo-3 stopped beside me without being told.
We stood in the water and listened.
For a long moment there was nothing. Just the tunnel. The faint distant movement of water somewhere in the drainage system.
Then I heard it.
Not footsteps. Something different. A slow displacement of water, some distance ahead, irregular and patient. Something moving through the tunnel in the same direction we were moving.
I put my hand on Theo-3's arm. He looked at me. I held up two fingers, pointed forward, made the hand signal for slow.
He nodded once.
We moved forward at half pace, headlamps angled slightly down to reduce forward light projection. The sound ahead continued. Slow. Consistent. Not moving away from us. Not moving toward us.
Just there.
Forty meters ahead, at the edge of the headlamp range, something became visible.
It was alone. Standing in the center of the tunnel between the rails, the water up to its waist. A section of deeper flooding we hadn't reached yet, facing away from us, turning its head slowly from side to side in that searching pattern they all did when they were scanning and finding nothing.
Theo-3 leaned close to my ear. "One confirmed signal. No masking detected. I believe it is alone."
I looked at the water depth ahead. Waist height. Fighting in waist-deep water in the dark was a different problem from a dry concourse. Different leverage, different footing, different everything.
I looked at the four devices on Theo-3's belt.
I thought about the notes I had written upstairs and left with four people I had zip-tied to the floor.
"Device," I said quietly.
Theo-3 looked at me.
"Use a device," I said. "Get it into one of the maintenance alcoves and we go past."
Something in the amber eyes that I didn't have a full name for yet.
"Yes sir," he said.
He unclipped one of the devices, checked its charge, and threw it in a low arc over the water. It landed past the infected with a small splash. The frequency hit the tunnel. The infected turned immediately and began moving toward it. Theo-3 moved along the wall, staying in the shallower water near the edge, and when the infected passed the maintenance alcove entrance he stepped forward and guided it in with a firm steady pressure on its back. The door was already open. He pulled it shut.
The bolt slid home.
Three devices left.
We waded through the deeper section, waist height, cold, and came out the other side into shallower water and kept moving.
The light came gradually.
A suggestion of pale yellow ahead rather than complete black, growing as we walked. The tunnel walls became visible without the headlamp. The water surface caught light from somewhere above.
Tiong Bahru station.
The platform appeared above us. Empty. Clear.
I put my hands on the platform edge and pulled myself up. My left leg protested. I ignored it and got up anyway and turned and reached down.
Theo-3 handed Echo up first, lifted her from the backpack and passed her to me carefully, keeping the injured leg free of pressure. She came willingly and the moment I set her on the platform she shook herself thoroughly and sent water everywhere.
"Thank you Echo," I said.
She looked at me with her ears forward and her tongue out.
Theo-3 climbed up beside us. We stood on the platform of Tiong Bahru station, wet and tired and short one frequency device from when we had entered the tunnel, and looked at what was around us.
Empty. Undisturbed. The station name on the wall in the familiar MRT font, perfectly intact.
TIONG BAHRU.
One station down. Redhill next.
And after Redhill — up. Out of the tunnel. Into the open air on elevated track with nothing between us and whatever Singapore had become at ground level.
I sat down on a platform bench and let my legs rest. Echo immediately put her chin on my knee. I put my hand on her head without thinking about it.
"Air quality," I said.
"Better than the tunnel," Theo-3 said. "You should rest here for ten minutes sir."
"Ten minutes," I said.
"Yes sir."
I leaned back and looked up at the dark ceiling of Tiong Bahru station and thought about Redhill and what came after it.
The water dripped from my clothes onto the platform in a slow steady rhythm.
Echo's tail moved once.
We rested.
[ THEO-3 ]
Personal Log. Day 154. 11:47 hours.
We have reached Tiong Bahru station. All three of us present and uninjured. Echo's bandage survived the flooding. I will redress it during the rest period.
Current device count: three.
We used one device in the tunnel on a single infected. It was the correct call. I want to note that the call was Damian's, not mine. I also want to note that I did not expect him to make it.
The concourse situation earlier, four infected, all restrained, notes left for any survivors who might find them. Damian wrote them without being asked and without discussing it. I watched him write them. I did not say anything because I did not have anything adequate to say.
I do not think he has changed his position from the other night. I do not think this is a resolution of anything. But something is happening that I am tracking carefully and choosing not to name yet in case naming it makes it more fragile than it already is.
Redhill station is approximately seven hundred meters ahead. After Redhill the tunnel ends and the line rises to elevated track. Open air. Singapore at ground level.
I have been underground for less than four hours and I find I am already thinking about the sky.
I imagine Damian is also thinking about the sky, but for different reasons.
End log.
End of Chapter 9